Case Study

More than 50,000 men and women have been wounded in military service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many
of these recently injured veterans are in rehabilitative centers where
they face barriers that prevent them from voting independently, securely
and privately.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of
Technology, along with the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation and the Operation BRAVO Foundation, are developing ways to
provide a more accessible voting system for service members to use
within treatment facilities.

“Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan
have different types of injuries than the general population with
disabilities,” said Brad Fain, head of the Human Systems Engineering
Branch at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “The range of
accommodations they need to participate in elections differs. We need to
better understand the barriers faced by veterans with disabilities to
make the electoral process more accessible.”

After two years of
study and hundreds of interviews with recently wounded vets, Fain and
the research team found veterans with disabilities are likely to
experience difficulty with voting because of inaccessible polling
places, complicated ballot design and voting technologies that are not
compatible with their needs.

Traumatic brain injury, the
“signature injury” of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, can
impact cognitive ability, independence, memory and attention span. Other
common injuries among service members include mobility impairments or
amputation of limbs, visual and hearing loss, sensation changes and
post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which can affect voting
activities.

Researchers recommend taking simple steps to improve
voting access such as simplifying the ballot design and removing
distractions during the voting process.

They also recommend
implementing a portable, tablet-based voting system with numerous
control options. Fain is developing a marking tool that would be able to
read the ballot in a format the individual could understand, allow the
person to mark the ballot and then export it to the voting commissioner
in an acceptable manner.

While this innovative technology shows
potential, the researchers point out that advancements in technology
alone will not solve the problem of voting accessibility for wounded
veterans.

“A technology solution is not going to be useful unless
we have the policy solutions, security issues and support services that
allow people to vote privately, securely and independently,” Fain said.

Georgia
Tech researchers will continue to study these issues in a larger study
on voting among the general population with disabilities.

“It’s an
honor to help solve this problem so all Americans with disabilities
have the best opportunity possible to cast a private, secure and
independent vote, especially veterans since those injuries were obtained
in service to their country,” Fain said.

In 2010, the Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation, in partnership with GTRI and the Operation BRAVO Foundation, received a
grant from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission for this project.